Well, I recall some differing opinions on this and I was amongst the negative. Well, apparently we were wrong. I was just contacted by the owner (Chuck in AL) of a bone stock Monza that has a GM IMSA package installed on it, and it was sold to the original owner with full IMSA fibreglass kit. The car was sold in October 1974 and was serial number 000063, yeah, it was the 63rd Monza assembled ... ever. The car is an absolutely bone stock 262 V8 Monza, even the wheels are original 4-bolt.

Chuck has talked with the original dealership that sold the car and the guy he talked to remembers the car and mentioned that a second IMSA car was also sold out of that dealership. He also has paperwork that is a release form from the dealership's service department. The seller at the dealership says that the cars arrived assembled and they simply did the prep work and out-the-door it went.

Apparently the IMSA kit was drop shipped to some place in Illinois then sent to a dealership. An old post by Dick stated that Diversified Glass Products was the maker of the GM IMSA panels. I have a 1-page article from Super Chevy magazine that has all the GM part numbers for the complete GM IMSA kit.

Chuck is looking for the build sheet if there is one in the car at all, that might at least shed some light as to where it was drop-shipped for assembly of the IMSA panels. My Road Hawk's build sheet shows the location of Robin's Products who did the assembly of the stock Skyhawk into a Road Hawk.

Other than that, this is all the info we know. Anyone else have anything to add???

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Last edited by fyrftr50 on Sun Sep 11, 2011 9:28 am, edited 2 times in total.

These two articles have the GM part numbers for the body panels. The Super Chevy article is from Bryan and the other is from a Jan 1975 Cars magazine. At least an indication that they were ready in 1974. Brian

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Gary (deansgarage) worked for Buick's design team back in the 70's and 80's and brings up Diversified a few times in various articles, including models that had extensive fibreglass work done, like the IMSA Monza. I posted a message to him about this topic, hopefully he'll be able to offer some insight.

Last edited by fyrftr50 on Sun Sep 11, 2011 9:34 am, edited 1 time in total.

Bryan I googled Randy Wittine the Chevy design guy mentioned in your article and he is all over the web. Gary (Dean's garage) remembered a lot about the Skyhawk back in the day and I bet Randy might be able to shed some light on the dealer prepped IMSA Monza or at least the Mirage. When you hear back from Gary you might ask or if you like I will start tracking Randy down. Brian

How many different versions of the IMSA pkgs were there? I was always told there were 3 different styles....1 being what was offered on the Mirage, the 2nd being whats on the red car in the photos above and a 3rd which was said to be even wider than the 2nd.

(correction I do not believe this car was built for congressman gray I think he acquired it for his museum. I also believe this is the car mentioned in the h07 registry as a banshee which would have been sold through briggs chevrolet. I believe the panels were installed by dekon engineering. They would have had early access to the panels for the race cars they were building. Also I spoke to the owner of Jay Kline chevrolet who had a imsa bodied street car built by dekon. The car was deemed to expensive to sell.)

The car was at some point bought by Illinois congressman ken gray who owns/owned a museum where the car was stored for years. It has the congressional parking garage sticker on the rear window in the top pictures. It was originally yellow. I wonder if the car in the H07 registry in the article about the BANSHEE was its sister - it was also yellow. Being the 63rd car it was built in the first hour of production. Asking price was about 6500 on ebay in 2009. You could probably contact the congressman or his museum for more info.

"An unnamed first lady's inaugural gown, signed photos of a young Ronald Reagan posed in a lifeguard swimsuit, autographed photos of Gray and several past presidents, plaques that had hung in Gray's congressional office, antique furniture and[b] [u]antique cars were all open for public bid[/u][/b]. Green said Gray's deteriorating health had prompted him to let go of his 50-year collection

hammerdown7 wrote:The Mirage was never an IMSA package. It certainly borrowed on the theme but in no way was made for road racing.

Dick

Ok...lol...I guess I phrased that wrong or inacurately...what I meant was, that I had always heard there were 3 different versions of the add on fender extensions/body panels....but only had seen the IMSA and the Mirage packages. Both look very very cool though. Gimme some time on learning the correct names on all this stuff, Ive been out of the H-body game for about 18yrs now and just couldnt resist the urge anymore....

From what I have heard over the years there have been a number of subtle IMSA monza panel changes (possibly various widths, tails, front air dam hole styles, etc) but I'm not sure they were refering to GMs designs, that may have remained the same and unaltered from the part numbers shown above. The changes may have come from various aftermarket companies jumping on board and making slight changes to make the product "their own".

My '75 IMSA differs from that one in several ways.......mine has the added on cowl Hood style bulge, front grille area isn't slotted for cooling, front turn signals differ (those appear to.be a factory turn signal housing, mine has aftermarket turn signals), mine has the door locks covered and notched just enough for the door handles, and at the rear of the rear flares, the red cars flares are cut back towards the rear tires slightly.....the rear flares on mine come straight down along the edge of the rear bumper....Ill try to get some pictures to post up of the different areas and differences to show yet another body version.....lol

I talked to Randy Wittine today and he remembers the GMPP parts for the IMSA Monza but did not know of any production Monza's assembled with them. He gave me the number for a person that would know more so I called Jack Purcell. Jack remembers the Mirage well since he was involved with making it I guess. I really didn't spend much time on the phone with them but they both were interested with the idea of a Monza delivered to a dealership with the IMSA panels. Jack has told me that he is going to contact another person that may know about the IMSA panel Monza's and will get back to me tomorrow with what he finds out. So with any luck maybe we will find out more! How many could of been made with the panels hopefully more than two. I know both were busy today but were willing to listen and help out so that is much appreciated!

Monzaaddict suggested calling the museum so if that hasn't been done yet we should try? If anyone can think of a question for Jack that needs to be asked post it up I should have the chance to run it buy him tomorrow afternoon. Brian

I don't have a question but Jack Purcell and Jack Juratovic were B.O.R.T, they designed and sold the Mirage concept to Chevrolet. I spent several afternoons with both of them and they brought a set of Black Mirage parts to the 8 Mile studio to put on my '76 Spyder, old picture below.

Dick

's Monza640.jpg

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Last edited by hammerdown7 on Tue Sep 20, 2011 6:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.